


you'll never see the end of the road (if you're traveling with me)

by maybetwice



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotherly Affection, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Universe Alteration
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-13
Updated: 2016-10-13
Packaged: 2018-08-22 04:31:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,169
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8272910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/maybetwice
Summary: Rhaegar is born the second son of King Aerys and Queen Rhaella. Everything is different. Everything is the same.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Written for a prompt at valar_morekinks: "How would things change if Rhaegar was Aerys second son and was made to take care of Dany after they field Westeros? How would things change for better and worse, if Dany was raised by Rhaegar, whose temperament was similar to the one he had in the books? Would Dany and Rhaegar want to take back Westeros, or would they be content living in Pentos?"
> 
> I came for the positive parental figure in Dany's life, and stayed because I really, really enjoyed exploring this version of their world.

*

The view of her elder brother sitting at the open window and staring out at the sea is enough to break Dany’s heart. Rhaegar absently plucks the strings of his harp to a haunting melody that she knows that he’s composing as he plays. She sits on the stone floor beside his feet and looks to the curtain of pale gold that hangs over his closed eyes, then out to the clay tile roofs of Pentos, and the sea beyond that leads home. 

“Is it about going home?” she asks in a bare whisper when Rhaegar’s fingers still on the strings. “The song.” But that can’t be right, Dany thinks, because going home should be a song of triumph and glory. A song played on horns and drums, not a delicate thing like a harp.

“It’s about a beautiful woman who abandons her duty and home for love.” Rhaegar opens his eyes and smiles so kindly, so sadly that her heart does break for him.

Dany knows the answer before she asks, “Does she ever go home again?” 

Rhaegar looks back to the sea, looking out at something she cannot see. The calloused pads of his fingers singing against the textured strings. The ephemeral sound it makes is delicate, so small that she might even believe it was never there.

“Never,” he finally answers in a strange voice.

*

Rhaegar has cared for Daenerys as long as she can remember. It was Rhaegar who lifted her from their mother’s arms as she lay dying and plotted their escape from Dragonstone to Pentos with Ser Willem. It was Rhaegar who sold his beautiful armor, set with rubies, to buy their quiet estate on the sea. It is Rhaegar who tells her stories of Westeros, of Aegon’s conquest of the seven kingdoms and Queen Nymeria, of Florian the Fool and fearsome wights in the frozen north.

He tells her of Prince Daeron, their eldest brother, who died in the chaos of the Laughing Tree Rebellion, when the lords of ten houses were executed by fire for suspicion of treason. Daeron, Rhaegar explained kindly, was the best of men, the best of princes; loyal and good and true. A prince who stood by his filial duty to their father, the king, even in a time of madness.

Rhaegar is a skilled storyteller, and it is Rhaegar who makes Daenerys ache to return to a place she has not been since the day she was born; to reclaim what was theirs from a cold-blooded Usurper.

“How did it happen?” Dany asks one day, curled against the open window and looking out to the far horizon, where she imagines she might see Westeros if she could only have the eyes of an eagle. If she is truly the blood of the dragon, she might sprout wings and fly across the Narrow Sea, lay waste to their enemies. She would roost in the Red Keep and dare anyone to stand against her and the peace she would bring.

Rhaegar looks momentarily surprised, draws his fingers from his harp. “Why, you mean?” At her nod, Rhaegar frowns, hesitates over his words as he chooses the right thing to say. “Father was unwell. All the court knew it. It would have been better if the rebels had instead wanted to elevate Daeron to regent, or even make him king.”

“They had their pretender,” says Dany angrily. “They were grasping, hungry for power.”

“They were angry, Dany. It was a terrible time.” Her brother does not like to speak of the rebellion, but he is patient in his sadness.

Her spine straightens, her feet swinging toward the cold floor in an instant. “Rhaegar! You cannot suggest they had any right to kill Father and Daeron and Elia!”

Her brother lifts a calming hand to gesture for her to come to sit next to her. When she does, he draws her close enough that she can feel the warmth from his side pressed to hers. Rhaegar reaches for a sprig of a sweet-smelling herb with pale, purple flowers and braids it into her hair. He does not speak for several minutes, until Dany squirms with impatience. Only when the braid is finished and she slumps into his side does Rhaegar push out a huff of air. 

“What have I told you of the duty of a king?”

She turns her head to peer at him, a small wrinkle forming on her forehead. “That you must rule for the commonfolk first, and for the pleasure of your lords, and then for yourself.”

Rhaegar nods once, tucks the stray pieces of her hair into the fresh braid. “The weight of a crown is very heavy. If you should falter under that weight, if you rule for yourself first, you forfeit that crown to whomever will promise to rule for your people.”

“It is cruel to speak ill of the dead,” says Dany. “They cannot defend what they have done.”

“Their actions must defend themselves. What Father did gave Westeros little reason to believe House Targaryen should sit the throne, even good Prince Daeron.”

“An angry mob is nothing to the worth of a king. They had no right to steal Daeron’s throne, and then his life.”

Rhaegar laughs. “An angry mob is everything to a king, Dany. But it was no mob, nor wolf or stag, lion or eagle, that overthrew the dragon. Only a dragon can destroy itself. Remember that.”

And with that, he kisses her hair again, the braid that coils around her head like a crown, and leaves her to herself.

*

Dany is barely fifteen when she finds the letter in Rhaegar’s study. A gilded seal catches on a gleam of sunlight from under a small stack of parchment, a few bills mixed with her brother’s regular correspondence with Ser Jon. Moving slowly, without even a backward glance at the door, she draws it out and paints her fingertips over the etched likeness of the sun set over a spear.

She has no time to be surprised by the letter’s contents, for she is quickly enraged by them.

Brandishing the sheet of parchment, she storms into the conservatory where Rhaegar is carefully examining a small rose bush, where pale, blue buds have formed. “You turned down Prince Doran’s offer for an army?”

Rhaegar looks up at her with his same, maddening patience, and she wants to scream at him. Prince Doran’s polite reply leaves open an opportunity in the future, that perhaps she herself would be interested in marrying one of his sons if Rhaegar will not have Princess Arianne. The terms are clear, and the idea that Rhaegar has turned them down in favor of a life of exile is too terrible to imagine. 

“That is a very old letter.” Slowly, her brother unfolds from his roses and holds out his hand for the parchment, which Dany grips tighter. 

She has heard the news, from the traders at market and from Illyrio and her brother himself. The Usurper is dead, Westeros is at war. The people are suffering while five kings fly their banners and smash their armies against one another. And Rhaegar Targaryen, the true king of Westeros, prunes his roses. 

“Prince Doran might reconsider if you write him now, pledge to marry Princess Arianne and take back the Iron Throne. If you wrote Lord Tyrell—”

“Mace Tyrell married his daughter to Renly Baratheon,” says Rhaegar quietly, his hand still extended for the letter. “And then to Joffrey Baratheon, when Lord Renly was murdered by his own guard. The forces of the Reach were offered to the Lannisters in King’s Landing. Westeros has enough fire and blood without the Targaryen banners flying over the ruins. If you’d only listen, Daenerys, I could tell you why.”

But she cannot. Tears sting her eyes and the letter is a crumpled ruin in her fist. “Then there is one fewer pretender-king for you to overcome. The ironborn are no match for you. Take Prince Doran’s army and smash Stannis Baratheon’s forces before he can regroup. March on King’s Landing as Aegon the Conqueror did, and—”

“ _Listen,_ Dany,” Rhaegar says again, gently pulling the letter from her hands and smoothing it in his hands. “Prince Doran wrote this long before Prince Trystane was betrothed to Myrcella Baratheon. If we do not have the support of the Crownlands, the Reach, or of Dorne…” He pauses, rests one big, warm hand on her bare shoulder and gives it a kind squeeze. “Leave them to their wars. I traded everything to keep you alive and safe when our family was shattered and I would not trade your safety for all the kings in Westeros.”

Dany’s rage boils over. She knocks his hand away and shouts, “If you had used your armor to fight for your throne rather than to buy a cottage, we would have never left home!” 

Dany cannot remember the last time she shouted at her brother. But their words are _Fire and Blood_ , and though she feels hot with anger, Rhaegar’s face does not break under her storm. 

“If I had used my armor to fight, your head would have been dashed against the stones of Dragonstone and your body fed to the sea.” He lowers his hand and observes her carefully, as one might watch a feral cat. “You do not know what war is like, Dany. What it is like to stand against men you respected and loved as brothers, and to slay them. When I could do nothing to protect my family, and all that is left stands before me.”

As suddenly as it came, her anger is gone, replaced by a chilling clarity of mind. Rhaegar will not fight. Perhaps he once fought, or perhaps he was craven when he withdrew to his seat on Dragonstone with their mother, pregnant with Dany, and young, sickly Viserys, who died in the same storm that Dany was born in. 

Rhaegar is handsome and kind, a heartbroken, melancholy man who watches the tides and tells stories of glory and grief. Whatever he was before, he left something of himself behind in the war. Something he will never recover.

“Are you truly unhappy in Pentos, Dany?” asks Rhaegar, his words heavy with his boundless grief. He is really asking if is she unhappy with the life he has given her, the life he chose for them fifteen years before.

“No,” she says sadly and folds her hand, delicate and small, around his. “But it will never be enough.”

*

At first, Dany thinks that is the end of it. Because Rhaegar will not fight his throne, she will have to fight for herself. She dispatches letters to their remaining friends in Essos, fiery words meant to rouse their old loyalties, or else their homesick longing to return from exile.

It is Illyrio who responds. Yes, he will help her to the Iron Throne. Yes, there is a way.

Something about it seems wrong, but Illyrio writes tempting words of the true loyalties of her people in Westeros. How they sew Targaryen banners in secret, toast to her brother’s reign, and will rise for them. She wants to believe that Illyrio wishes to help her because she is Daenerys of House Targaryen, the Stormborn. Dany does not intend to tell Rhaegar, telling herself that she is still angry at his toothlessness, and waiting for her unease to pass. 

But he comes to her when she breaks her fast in her rooms two mornings after Illyrio’s letter arrives. 

Dany considers ignoring him, but Rhaegar is patient where she is impetuous. She sets aside her melon and kisses him on the cheek, the same greeting she has given him her entire life. Rhaegar dusts something invisible from the chair opposite hers and folds his hands in his lap, smiling as he waits for her to finish her breakfast. 

“I’ve been to Illyrio’s estate,” he finally says as she wipes the sticky juice of the fruit from her fingers with a damp cloth. When her head snaps up, her eyes wide and fearful, Rhaegar looks solemn, but not angry. “And I have spoken with Ser Jon.”

Dany squares her shoulders, lifts her chin and says defiantly, “We have already said all that must be said on this, Rhaegar. Someone must do something for House Targaryen.”

“Illyrio meant to marry you to a Dothraki Khal in exchange for a seat on your small council. Or even more, if he thought he could take it from you.”

Anger sparks from the smoldering embers in her chest. “I am no child. I will do everything I must. Anything, Rhaegar.”

“I know.” He sounds sad, perhaps resigned, but Dany knows when her brother has made up his mind about something. Her heart skips in the hollow of her chest, thuds frightfully in her ears. For all her courage, Rhaegar still has power enough to snatch her dreams away. 

But her brother scrubs his fingers over his eyes and says, “Ser Jon will be your emissary. And others besides him.”

 _Her_ emissary, not Rhaegar’s.

“Who?” Dany challenges him, though she is stunned by his reversal. She tosses aside her now dirtied cloth and watches him defiantly.

“There are those who are still loyal,” says Rhaegar cryptically. “But that loyalty can only flourish in secret. Give it time. Ser Jon travels to Dorne in a sennight.”

And with that, Rhaegar rises and kisses her forehead, just where her crown ought to rest. It is not, Dany thinks, an accident. 

Before he leaves her, Rhaegar pauses in the door, as though something has only just occurred to him. “It may not seem as if anything has changed, Dany,” he says quietly. Sadly. “But I hope you will soon see just how much has.”

*

Nothing has changed.

Ser Jon does not return after a moon’s turn, but a ship arrives from Dorne not long after that. Oberyn Martell, the Red Viper, embraces Rhaegar like a lost brother when the gate of their garden is closed. Dany remembers that he was her good brother, that his sister and her eldest brother were married and are now dead. 

“It is good for you to come so far, Prince Oberyn,” says Rhaegar, when Prince Oberyn has wiped a tear from his cheek.

Prince Oberyn looks past her brother’s shoulder and directly at Dany when he says, “I would have traveled to the sun itself to see you.”

Rhaegar was right, Dany realizes sharply, when Prince Oberyn kneels at her feet and quietly declares her Queen Daenerys, First of Her Name. A single pebble preceding the landslide. 

_Everything_ has changed.

*

“You don’t mean to marry me to a man twice my age, do you?”

Rhaegar looks up over a pair of spectacles from where he reviews his letters in a chair beside the window. Dany is earnest, but Rhaegar’s face betrays his mirth at the idea. “To Oberyn? No.”

She picks her way through the room and stands at the window. Prince Oberyn has been in Pentos for nearly an entire moon, visiting merchants in the city and receiving guests of his own in the Targaryen siblings’ garden. Even now, she can see Oberyn leaning back in a chair, lifting his wine to yet another guest in the flower-perfumed sea breeze. 

“Then another of the Martell children?” Dany folds her arms over her front. Perhaps Prince Doran’s support comes only with his price. 

Her brother removes his spectacles and sets aside the letter. The seal is crimson, set with Ser Jon’s griffon signet. 

“No,” answers Rhaegar. There is something thoughtful in his eyes, as though he is trying to understand something that is just beyond him. From the garden, Prince Oberyn gives a deep laugh that carries to them. 

“Do you mean to tell me what he is doing here, then?” Dany doesn’t mean to lose her patience with him, but she has been patient for months. 

This, at least, draws out Rhaegar’s full smile. He waves her to the chair opposite his and pours her a cup of sweetened wine as gracious as any host might. “Oberyn is a fount of information on your foes,” he explains as Dany drinks. “But mostly he is a distraction for their benefit.”

Dany feels herself blink rapidly in surprise, cocks her head to the side as she swallows her wine. “A distraction? From what?” 

“Oberyn is known to go where Doran cannot, and Tywin Lannister courts Dorne.” Rhaegar gestures faintly to the letter from Ser Jon as he looks out to the sea. “As Lord Tywin looks this way, Ser Jon goes north.”

North, thinks Dany, and blurts, “To the Starks? By the gods, Rhaegar—”

At this, Rhaegar stops her with a pointed look to the open window. When he goes on, it is in a voice considerably softer than usual. “You must have allies to win the Iron Throne. You did once say you would do anything to take back the Iron Throne.”

“And I meant it,” Dany says immediately, because she did, even as she is glad not to be part of Illyrio’s schemes. She would do anything, though she did not imagine it might mean allying with the same great house that brought the downfall of hers. 

Her brother reaches across the short space between them, tips her chin upward. “Then I ask you to trust me.”

*

Rhaegar is in their library only a few days later, carefully scratching out a letter to Ser Jon when Dany comes in unannounced and closes the door behind her. He looks up from the table and instantly sets aside his pot of ink.

“This looks serious,” he says when she latches the open window so no one on the street can hear.

Dany looks over her shoulder to him with a dark expression. “Prince Oberyn suggested to me that I might like to become acquainted with Willas Tyrell.” 

“Ah,” says Rhaegar lightly. “What do you think of that?” 

Dany isn’t entirely sure why the idea that Rhaegar has been quietly planning her marriage feels like a betrayal. It isn’t as though she doesn’t know that her hand in marriage is valuable when they treat with their allies. But when she wheels around to face him properly, to rage about her wish to choose her own husband, she finds that Rhaegar looks neither guilty nor defensive, merely curious. 

“I must marry strategically if I hope to bring peace,” begins Dany in a thoughtful voice that first wavers, then grows stronger. “But I do not think we should reward a family that married two pretender-kings before they extended an offer of friendship to us.”

“Very well,” says Rhaegar pliantly, but he seems pleased with her answer. He stands from the table and folds his hands at the base of his back, pacing toward the map of Westeros where he taught Dany the history of the Seven Kingdoms and the reign of House Targaryen. He makes a striking picture, tall and broad of shoulder, his silver-gold hair loose tied loosely at his nape, gazing upon the map of his realm. Rhaegar would make a fine king, Dany thinks to herself. Thoughtful and wise, all the things their father could not be for his illness.

_But if he cannot, then I will be all that he would be and more._

“Have you given any thought as to how you might marry, then?” 

The question catches Dany by surprise, and she stiffens. But Rhaegar waits until she sweeps her eyes over the whole of the map. Calculating. She holds the support of Dorne and the loyalist houses of the Reach and Crownlands. There are two Baratheon kings, one with the support of the Stormlands, the other of the Westerlands and perhaps half of the Reach. The first is married, the second unconscionable. A Greyjoy on the Islands, striking futilely at the North. Weak, and with no great advantage to be gained. That leaves the Vale — neutral and withdrawn in their Eyrie — the Riverlands, and the North.

“Stark,” she concludes aloud, arriving at the same solution Rhaegar must have fallen upon weeks before, when he sent Ser Jon to treat with the North. “I must marry Robb Stark.”

*

It is mid-morning when Lady Stark and her retinue arrive, accompanied by smiling Prince Oberyn and two of his daughters. Oberyn bows deeply and kisses Lady Stark on the back of her hand before dismissing himself to await their decision, to be swiftly dispatched to Sunspear, and on to every noble house in Westeros.

When Dany begins to rise to meet her, Rhaegar silently presses his fingertips against her shoulder with the slightest shake of his head. Dany lifts her chin to show she understands, and it is Rhaegar who greets Lady Stark on her behalf. 

“Prince Rhaegar,” she says in a faint, hoarse voice when he bends to kiss her hand, too. Emotions war openly on her face; grief and nostalgia, surprise and suspicion. Dany is reminded that they must have known one another well enough in their youth, before the rebellion led them in opposite directions.

“We were very sorry to hear of Lord Stark’s death,” answers Rhaegar smoothly, though Dany cannot remember ever being sorry to hear it at all, except perhaps now, looking upon Eddard Stark’s grieved widow. 

But this, apparently, is the right thing to say, for the storm lifts from Lady Stark’s brow. “A kind sentiment, perhaps,” she says thickly, through tears she will never shed. “But my Ned was murdered.”

“Do you seek vengeance, Lady Stark?” asks Dany regally, closing her fingers around the arms of her chair, knowing the answer before it comes.

“I came to meet the woman who aspires to marry my son and king.” She is more bold than Dany expected from a woman who was born to rivers, or who has lived more than half her life in the bitter cold of the north. There is fire in Catelyn Stark’s river-blue eyes, and fire is something Dany recognizes. 

“I am the queen,” answers Dany in equal measure as Rhaegar looks on from behind. “Your son may marry me and sit the Iron Throne at my side, or he may bend the knee as Torrhen Stark did my ancestor.”

For a fevered moment, Dany thinks she’s overplayed her hand, for Lady Stark draws herself taller than before, her long, dove gray cloak falling back on her shoulders. She fears that she’s undone all the work Rhaegar has done to make her queen in his stead. But Rhaegar does not speak, does not even move from where he stands behind her chair.

“Winter is coming, Daenerys Stormborn, and it will take indiscriminately from us all,” Lady Stark recites coldly, scraping her gaze from Dany’s slippered feet to settle piercingly on her face

At last, Dany is rewarded when Lady Stark inclines her head very slightly to her, pausing to raise the corners of her lips in a grim smile. 

“Though I hope it may take a great deal more from those who killed my husband and made hostages of my daughters.”

*

Dany’s maid abruptly wakes her before dawn one morning at the beginning of autumn and leads her to a steaming bath. Her hair is tenderly braided and she is dressed in the flowing, crimson silk that puts her figure to its best. Once the girl is dismissed, Dany sits by her window, watching the sky lighten from black to gray, and then explode with fire along the edges of the horizon.

Everything has changed, she thinks, when the morning light touches the sea and casts the ships in the harbor in harsh relief against the pastel glow of the sky.

Lost to her own mind, Dany does not hear Rhaegar enter until the door closes behind him. He wears black leathers and a black cloak over his sword belt, but even the surprise of seeing Rhaegar dressed for the coming war falls aside when she sees what he carries in his hands.

Dany has only seen the pearlescent box that holds Queen Rhaella’s crown once before in her life, when she was only a small girl, but she knows it instantly when it catches in dim glow of her lantern. 

Rhaegar does not speak. Perhaps he cannot, choking back a storm of emotion when he lifts the crown from its bed of silk.

In King’s Landing, there would be a coronation in the Great Sept of Baelor, with the whole of the court watching. For years, Dany imagined it outside, her brother standing proudly on the steps of the Great Sept, so that the people Rhaegar loved might see the moment when he restored House Targaryen to glory. She imagined standing nearby, perhaps representing the Maiden in Rhaegar’s coronation.

But here, on the morning of their triumphant return, in their house in Pentos overlooking the Narrow Sea, Rhaegar kisses her brow before nesting the jeweled crown among her silver braids. 

Dany would have it no other way.


End file.
